SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, October 7
Want to make people laugh? Try citing a page number. That’s how Justice Elena Kagan sparked the first burst of laughter of the 2025-26 term as she spoke with attorney Stuart Banner about drawing a line between “matters going to trial strategy and matters going to trial testimony” when determining what lawyers can address with their clients during a mid-testimony recess. She told Banner she wasn’t trying to draw a new line and was, instead, just outlining what it says “right here … on page 284.”
Morning Reads
- John Roberts, chief for 20 years, starts another new term — with Trump, again, the main character (Josh Gerstein, Politico) — Cases on President Donald Trump’s policy moves and the scope of executive power, more broadly, have come to define the court’s Roberts era, according to Politico. “For nearly a decade, the Roberts court has often been dominated by Trump-related controversies. The justices refereed Trump’s most contentious policy moves during his first term in the White House, and even during the four years he was out of office, the court heard momentous appeals stemming from the criminal cases against him and from efforts to knock him off the 2024 ballot. But many more Trump challenges await.”
- Judge Poised to Free Abrego Garcia if Officials Can’t Supply Deportation Plans (Minho Kim, The New York Times) — U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis “said on Monday that she was inclined to release Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man now being held in U.S. immigration custody after wrongfully being removed to El Salvador, if the federal government cannot quickly produce evidence it has plans to deport him soon,” according to The New York Times. She “expressed exasperation” at lawyers for the Justice Department, who said on Monday that they had little evidence to share regarding deportation plans for Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia returned to the United States in June “after the Supreme Court ordered Trump officials to facilitate his return” and has been fighting new deportation proceedings since then.
- US Supreme Court will not hear Purdue appeal in OxyContin patent case (Blake Brittain, Reuters) — The court’s Monday order list included more than 30 pages of denials. Among the denied petitions was a request from Purdue Pharmaceuticals for the justices to review a decision that invalidated its “patents for a formulation of [OxyContin] designed to deter abuse” and allowed for the sale of “a generic version of the painkiller,” according to Reuters.
- Live Nation Denied Supreme Court Review of Ruling that Struck Down ‘Unfair’ Ticket Agreements (Bill Donahue, Billboard) — The justices also declined to review “a case against Live Nation over the company’s use of arbitration agreements for ticket buyers, leaving in place a ruling last year that called the provisions ‘opaque and unfair,'” according to Billboard. “The concert giant had asked the justices to tackle the case and overturn that strongly-worded decision, arguing it ‘creates massive uncertainty’ for the many companies that have long required consumers to sign such clauses.”
- DeSantis counts on Supreme Court for boost to Florida maps (Gray Rohrer, Tallahassee Democrat) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took to X on Monday to discuss the court’s case on congressional redistricting in Louisiana, writing that Florida is among the states that could be impacted by the outcome, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. “If the Court rules that racial gerrymandering violates the Constitution, that would have implications for mid-decade redistricting in a number of states, including Florida. We anticipate the Court to agree with the (Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice) that it does, in fact, violate the Constitution,” he said. The Florida Supreme Court recently upheld the state’s current congressional map, which eliminated a majority-Black district.
SCOTUS Quick Hits
- The justices will hear argument today in two cases: Chiles v. Salazar (on whether Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” violates free speech) and Barrett v. United States (on how to apply double jeopardy principles to a federal firearm offense). In the coming days, SCOTUSblog will have argument analyses for each case.
- The court’s Monday order list included a list of hundreds of cert petitions that were denied during the justices’ “long conference” on Sept. 29. For more about some of the specific cases denied, see the On Site section below.
- Lawyers for a group of transgender and nonbinary Americans urged the Supreme Court on Monday to leave in place a mandate by a federal judge that temporarily requires the State Department to provide them with passports reflecting the sex designation of their choice. The brief came in response to the Trump administration’s application asking the justices to allow it to refuse to provide such passports.
A Closer Look: Red Mass
On Sunday, none of the nine justices attended the 73rd Annual Red Mass at Washington, D.C.’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle due to a pre-dawn security incident, a first since the event’s D.C. inception in 1953.
Hours before the 9 a.m. service, D.C. police arrested Louis Geri, a 41-year-old from Vineland, New Jersey, who had pitched a tent on the cathedral steps despite a prior trespassing ban. The police found a Molotov cocktail, vials of unknown liquid, and possible fireworks in his possession. The arrest led to a roughly 20-minute delay and back-door entry for attendees but did not halt the Red Mass, organized annually by the John Carroll Society.
The Red Mass, named after red vestments used to symbolize the Holy Spirit, began in 13th-century Europe to bless judges for the judicial year. In the U.S., the Mass began in New York City in 1928. The Red Mass came to D.C. in 1953 thanks to the John Carroll Society, a lay Catholic group that promotes ethical service in law and government. The group is named for Archbishop John Carroll, the first U.S. Catholic bishop.
Attendees of the Red Mass pray for justices, judges, lawyers, and officials who administer justice, as well as other public officials. Historically, justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Clarence Thomas have attended, but this year’s absence, confirmed by a court spokesperson, reflected heightened security concerns in general for judicial figures.
Despite the justices’ absence, the cathedral welcomed lawyers, diplomats, and officials, with concelebrants including Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio; Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; and Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington. Washington’s archbishop, Cardinal Robert McElroy, who led the Mass, called on the legal community to be “architects of hope by reason of their vocation.” In his homily, “Men and Women of the Law as Architects of Hope,” McElroy urged legal professionals to counter the “dramatic collapse of faith in institutions of all kinds” and the “collapse of political dialogue.” He pointed to “the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the assault on the Capitol” as signs of a shift “from civil dialogue to uncivil dialogue to force and fear,” calling for reform of “systemic inequalities in our legal system” for the accused and victims alike.
The John Carroll Society now looks to the 74th Red Mass, set for Oct. 4, 2026, at St. Matthew’s, where the legal community will again seek divine guidance. McElroy’s words linger as a challenge: citing the prophet Isaiah, he asked that those in the law “renew their strength” and “soar as with eagles’ wings” to build a more just society.
SCOTUS Quote
“I have the honor to announce on behalf of the court that the October 2024 term of the Supreme Court of the United States is now closed and the October 2025 term is now convened.” — Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday as the court prepared to hear its first arguments of the 2025-26 term
On Site
From Amy Howe
Court Declines Hundreds of Cases
The Supreme Court on Monday released a list of hundreds of cases it won’t review as part of a long list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Sept. 29. The justices declined to consider a Missouri law that prohibits officers from enforcing federal restrictions on the sale and ownership of firearms, a police dog’s sniff into an open window, and a lawsuit brought by Laura Loomer against social media platforms, among other petitions. Learn more about the court’s Monday order list by reading Amy’s analysis.
Sex Designation Markers on Passports for Transgender and Nonbinary Americans
In a Monday filing, lawyers for a group of transgender and nonbinary Americans urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a mandate by a federal judge in Massachusetts that temporarily requires the State Department to provide them with passports reflecting the sex designation of their choice. A policy implemented by the Trump administration that “classif[ies] people based on sex assigned at birth and exclusively issu[es] sex markers on passports based on that sex classification,” wrote attorney Chase Strangio, “puts transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people in potential danger whenever they use a passport.” Read Amy’s analysis for more context.
Contributor Corner
Ranking the Modern Chief Justices
For the first day of the new term and on the 20th anniversary of Chief Justice John Roberts taking the bench, Adam Feldman explored, in his latest Empirical SCOTUS column, the work of the court’s last five chief justices, assessing how they used their office. By drawing on data related to unanimous judgments, leadership, and impact, he calculated a composite score for each of the five justices, and Roberts scored highest.
Roberts tops it not because he is the most transformative – Warren’s era still registers the largest formal doctrinal shifts – but because he combines the highest unanimity with targeted control of close cases. He is frequently in the majority when the court divides, he assigns strategically in 5–4 cases, and he authors when it preserves the coalition.
In her latest In Dissent column, Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, reflected on the court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, which addressed tension between state and federal authority in the area of drug regulation. The court’s ruling in favor of the federal government expanded its power to regulate local, non-commercial activity under the Constitution’s commerce clause.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had been too ill to attend oral argument, dissented but wrote no opinion of his own, while Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Clarence Thomas each wrote a dissent. In O’Connor’s view, “allowing Congress” to “package[e] regulation of local activity in broader schemes, is tantamount to removing meaningful limits on the Commerce Clause. … To draw the line wherever private activity affects the demand for market goods is to draw no line at all, and to declare everything economic.” Thomas’ dissent went even further. He not only would have ruled for the plaintiffs; he would have walked back the court’s precedents [expanding the reach of the commerce clause].
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